Panel abstract EASAS conference

Panel Abstract: Papers are to analyse the way language is used in modern literary texts and films in South Asian languages (including English), and the literary or cinematographic effect of that usage. They may, to mention just a few examples, analyse the effect of the use of metaphors or other figurative language; or the effect of dialogue (e.g. viewed from speech act theory), of various ways of representing speech and thought, of 'compound verbs', or of sociolinguistic features. Papers may discuss a single text or film, or compare different texts, or compare films with the literary text they are based on.

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

Paper Abstract: The authors of histories of Hindi literature include without any restriction the works written in Braj and Avadhi as well as the works written in any mixture of Western and Eastern Hindi boliy_n. Most of them include also the old Rajasthani, Pingal and Dingal works, some the Maithili poet Vidyapati too. Rajasthani and Maithili are recognized as full fledged literary languages by Sahitya Academy; recently Maithili was recommended by the Prime Minister of India to be recognized even as one of the official languages of India and accordingly included in the Indian Constitution VIII Schedule. Can we in such a situation include works written in all the above mentioned idioms in the history of Hindi literature or not? The paper tries to answer this question taking into consideration the complex criteria pertaining to the language identity sphere.

Paper 2 Title: Battle language: The martial imagery and purpose of Rajasthani heroic poetry

Paper Abstract: In Rajasthani heroic-epic genres, violence and death are presented as festive occasions, events to rejoice in. The poets drew on images of war, death, religious sacrifice and wedding rituals, that together constitute a celebratory “aesthetics of violence”. The proposed paper is a study of the symbolic meaning and warlike purpose of heroic compositions in the poetic language of medieval Rajasthan, Dingal. By looking at martial, religious and marital metaphors of war, we will try to see whether Dingal heroic poetry can be thought of as narrative re-enactments of violence that served to legitimize war. Did the poets of Rajasthan, like traditional poets elsewhere in the world, versify battle to mask the violent realities of war and thus create “fictions of concealment”?
To answer this question, we need to examine the purpose attributed to Dingal heroic poetry. It will be argued that Dingal heroic poetry not only served to versify war but was also composed to generate violence. The martial function of this kind of poetry can be read from the evocation of battle through word-images, but also from the metrical structure of the poems. In this section of the paper, an outline is offered of the metrical means of expression that the poets employed to imitate the sound of war and create a sonorous type of poetry, or “poetical warcry”, recited at the onset of battle to motivate warriors for war. To conclude, we intend to detail how the symbolic meaning of battle metaphors may have related to the metrical structure and practical, warlike purpose of Dingal heroic poetry.

Paper 3 Title: Shyama-Svapna: Rhyming prose in a nineteenth-century Hindi novel

Paper Abstract: The novel Shyama-Svapna (1885, published 1888) by Thakur Jagmohan Singh (1857-1899) is hardly known outside India despite its strikingly original characteristics. It is the story of a man who has a vivid dream in which two star-crossed lovers, the Brahmin girl Shyama and the Kshatriya Shyamsundar, meet each other repeatedly in secret but realize they will never be able to marry because of their different castes. The story of Shyama is surrounded by many amazing events like the apparitions of gods, a train journey over sea and various magical feats.
One of the book’s unusual features is the frequent use of rhyming prose, i.e. sentences in which two or more words rhyme although they have the form of prose sentences and do not contain metre. Rhyming prose was a regular feature of the earliest Khari Boli Hindi texts, like Premsagar (1803), Nasiketopakhyan (1803), Rani Ketki ki Kahani (1803) and Simhasan Battisi (1805) but afterwards fell into desuetude; Shyama-Svapna seems to be the last example of its use in Hindi literature. The paper will investigate the possible origins of rhyming prose in Hindi, particularly Riti poetry and the Sanskrit and Islamic literatures. Examples of its occurrence in several works will be given and finally the possible reasons for its use in Shyama-Svapna and its disappearance in the late nineteenth century will be discussed.

Paper Giver 4: Mariola Offredi, Department of Eurasian Studies, University of Venice, Italy

Paper Abstract: Dhumil (Sudama Pandey “Dhumil”, 1936-1975) is a rebel poet, as emerges not only from the themes of his poems, but also from the composition technique with which he constructs his images. He is capable of producing “attractive” images, as some unpublished fragments of his earliest work demonstrate. However, in the poems from the collection Sansad se sarak tak (From Parliament to the Street, 1972, 2nd edn. 1975) he uses a “visionary” or hallucinatory method to create provocative images. This provocative vein runs through the whole poem, because one image does not move seamlessly to the next as it does in Muktibodh’s poetry. In the latter case, an image is built up through subsequent lines, or appears in different form in the same poem or in others; sometimes it is condensed into a symbol (and often a personal one). Dhumil’s poetry, on the other hand, is characterised by an accumulation of images, the purposely created emotional chaos stimulating the reader at a pre-rational level. However, Dhumil’s images are not abstract; instead, they are endowed with a unique concreteness typical of hallucinations.

Paper Giver 5: Theo Damsteegt, Dept. of South and Central Asian Languages and Cultures, Univ. of Leiden, The Netherlands

Paper Abstract: The past tense most commonly used for telling narratives in Hindi is the “aorist”, which consists of the past participle alone: vah gaya “he went”. It basically presents actions as completed and as successive parts of a story. Two past forms not built on the past participle are the “continuous past” (vah ja raha tha “he was going”), which is commonly explained as expressing an action in progress during a limited time in the past, and the “imperfective past” (vah jata tha), which is taken to indicate a habitual action or state in the past.
Though the above explanations of the imperfective and continuous past do indeed apply to many cases, there seem to be exceptions. In Giriraj Kisor’s novel Yatraem we find the following passage: us hal ki sthiti mem kuch na kuch antar par jata tha “Some change or other occurred in that hall”, where in view of the context the imperfective past par jata tha expresses neither a habitual or repeated action nor a state. And, on the other hand, one wonders why in Mohan Rakes’s short story “Ek aur zindagi”, the continuous past kah raha tha is used in the sentence [...] bacca hath karke kah raha tha ki ‘papa’ aur ‘pitaji’ ek hi vyakti ko nahim kahte “The child was stubbornly saying that papa and pitaji are no expressions for one and the same person”, where the aorist *bacce ne kaha (“The child said”) would seem to be more in harmony with the nature of the action. Interestingly, some of the revisions Mohan Rakes made in his short stories offer also relevant material.
This paper will explore the possibilities and problems of explaining such cases, more specifically the question whether or not they can be interpreted as past-tense variants of specific uses of the imperfective and continuous present. For example, one of the explanations of the use of the imperfective non-iterative present argued in my recent study The Present Tense in Modern Hindi Fiction (Groningen: Forsten, 2004), is its possibility to express perfective aspect, while the continuous present has in some cases been found to imply emotional emphasis.

Paper 6 Title: Language as an alienating factor in Hindi and Indo-English literature

Paper Abstract: Sociology generates the majority of alienation studies. However, interesting perspectives can be reached when considering alienation as a literary phenomenon. Below, different instances of language as an alienating factor will be discussed. The present observations are adapted from my MA thesis ‘Crossing Borders: Alienation of the Indian Immigrant in Hindi and Indo-English Fiction’. Assertions will be supported with excerpts and examples from a range of Hindi and Indo-English texts (mainly short stories).
Firstly, authorial alienation is discussed; instances when (in this case) language creates a distance between the writer and his/her writing. This problem already arises with language choice, predominantly in the field of Indo-English literature, which is often typified by a formal and/or flowery English. A similar problem arises with the translation of texts, when the act itself of translating, brings with it a shift of meaning away from the original. A translation from Hindi to English is alienating in other ways, due to the large amount of culturally bound words that exists in Hindi. Finally, dialogue often constitutes an alienating factor. For example, when representing various languages in a text that is cast solely in English or Hindi.
The second section deals with linguistic alienation of characters. Language will be discussed both as a cause and as an effect of alienation. Instances of miscommunication between characters are postulated as a possible cause. The pride that another character feels for his language Hindi is predominantly a result of his feelings of alienation. Subsequently, several examples are given of particularities in the use of names that seem to indicate either an outspoken affinity or on the other hand, rejection of a certain culture. Furthermore, the use of names can indicate a character’s confusion. Complete omission of a character’s name also has
an alienating effect, by creating a distance between the reader and the character and the character and his/her environment. Thirdly, stylistic aspects will be addressed in examining the authors’ conscious use of language to accentuate the feel of a character’s alienation. Now language is no longer a complicating factor; but is deliberately engaged by the author to create a sense of alienation.

Paper Giver 7: Claudia Preckel, Seminar für Orientalistik und Indologie, Ruhr-University, Bochum, Germany

Paper 7 Title: Giving terror a name- linguistic implications of Bollywood's portrayal of Islam

Paper Abstract: Since the new millennium, several films have appeared on screen in which Islamic terrorism and jihad in Kashmir are portrayed (e.g. "Fiza," Mission Kashmir" or "Refugee"). One central message of these films seems to be that Indian Islam is a good Islam, whereas the "bad" Islam is sponsored from outside, especially from the Arab countries, but also from the ethnic group of the Pashtoons. This paper tries to analyse, how language is used to underline this message. For example, it can be seen that the terrorists' language contains many words of Arabic origin, while they are also found to use lots of Arabic expressions and proverbs, for example, regarding the duties of a "true Muslim."
The names of the protagonists are another subject of analysis. It can be clearly observed that these names are not chosen "by chance", but that they, too, underline the general message of the film and the protagonists' attitudes towards Islam and terrorism.
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Paper Giver 8: Guzel V.Strelkova, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, Russia

Paper Abstract: In this paper, based on some modern Hindi novels (starting with heroines of Jayashankar Prasaad and Jainendra Kumar, continuing with heroes of Ajney, Bhisham Sahni, Ilachandra Joshi, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Mannu Bhandari, Ganga Prasad Vimal, Mohan Rekesh and Alakaa Saraavagi), I would like to discuss the proper names of heroes in order to find out what possibilities there are for a better understanding and explanation of a hero’s character, and how a hero’s name is linked to his self-identity. I will try to show how new tendencies of choosing a hero’s name are strongly linked with a “cultural memory” and a traditional attitude. The problem can be interpreted from a historical point of view, and with the help of some additional aspects (correlation of an author and a hero, narration and a narrator, pseudonym, localization etc.).
A traditional, well-known name can be used as a mask, a sign that gives necessary associations and is afterwards used for a new interpretation or a literary game. Different meanings of a name, “self-speaking” names give a hint for understanding a hero and a novel itself. In this connection, titles of novels by Jainendra Kumar are discussed. An author uses fashionable names or names showing a connection with other novels – and so a hero’s name helps to comprehend a literary process as a whole.
Traditional heroes can be nameless, too, allowing an author to discuss some common, general problems without individualization. A nameless hero is either connected with a tradition, or acts in a romantic/exotic atmosphere, or confirms an attempt to remove all contradictions while choosing identity during a “transit period” (confronting European civilization or in modern conditions when old patriarch values are lost).
In the early Hindi novel a name itself is usually not an object of reflection. If a hero has a name, it is his important characteristic without any discussion, or it can be changed (it then demonstrates changes of a plot and a new level of a hero’s development), or is never mentioned at all -- and we have to find out why. We see some changes in the attitude towards a name (from a taboo and interpreting it as a sign of religious, social, gender, regional identity up to either refusal to have it or apprehension of it as an esthetic object of reflection.) So a name helps to understand some processes in modern Hindi literature, and find out what tendencies found in early novels were developed later. The continuity and succession in the use of specific names, too, creates an important sphere for research and interpretation.

Paper Giver 9: Suman Ghosh, Dept. of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India

Paper 9 Title: English in post-colonial India, Case studies from Satyajit Ray’s cinema

Paper Abstract: The Indian subcontinent has had a complex relationship with the English language for over three centuries. Much like the initial trade encounters of Indian people with the English themselves, the relationship between Indian languages and English began as one of give and take. Later, when the Crown took over the reins, English became the new ‘official’ language and younger Indians received English education to become India’s first generation of bureaucrats. Thus English was firmly rooted as the language of power in the subcontinent.
If English became the language of power, it also became Caliban’s tongue, the language of rebellion and protest since the first decade of the 20th century when it opened a window to the world for Western educated Indians. For both the emerging British bureaucracy as well as the nationalists, English became an important language in sustaining their respective ethics. After India’s independence in 1947 both the nationalists and the bureaucrats came together to form a government under Nehru, noted for his liberal Western education and values. Thus the British left India, but English stayed behind as a language which performed many functions.
Satyajit Ray’s cinema is about the people of India, both before and after Independence. In more than 30 feature films, India’s most celebrated film director has portrayed people in pre and post-colonial India. His characterisation is detached, well rounded and most important of all, realist. His films serve as a genuine social record of everyday life and a mode of understanding the changing lives of people in the subcontinent. This record is richly detailed, and chronicles situations of great social and political change through smaller behavioural changes in everyday life, the changing roles played by language.
From a close study of the numerous roles played by the English language as spoken and used by characters (both frontline and fringe) from a wide cross-section of social classes and situations in Ray’s films, I shall present an analysis of the functions of English in a post-colonial society. This presentation will refer to a wide spectrum of his films including Aparajito (the second part of the Apu trilogy about the education of an adolescent Apu, 1957), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964) and Days and Nights in the Forest (1970), as well as ones lesser known in the West, including Kanchenjungha (1962) and The Hero (1966). In doing so, I will probe not only the social function of language, but also its artistic representation in cinema. The presentation will be illustrated with clips from individual films.

Paper Abstract: Language and style have always been important issues in the writing of drama, and more so when dramas were written not only for the stage but also for the screen. Artistic choices and commercial aims always require peculiar techniques in writing as well as precise linguistic and stylistic choices, to fit the mood of the drama. This is naturally true of Urdu drama and cinema, considering the fact that Urdu stage drama was for long an important source of inspiration for Hindi and Urdu cinema.
We would like to study the language of a famous Urdu drama, «Anarkali» by Sayyad Imtiaz Ali Taj (1922, 1933). Anarkali is the quasi-mythical character of a slave girl in love with Mughal imperial heir Saleem (afterwards Jahangir), a love supposedly passionately shared by the prince. But the emperor (the father, Akbar) would not approve of such a debasing liaison and had the poor girl walled alive while the prince was kept away (in 1599 AD). The "romantic" drama takes place in Lahore, at the Mughal court, and legend has it that the new (and still grieving) emperor had a magnificent mausoleum built in her memory, ten years after her tragic death. The monument is still standing and very famous, as Anarkali herself.
It is not her tomb, say modern historians. But the legend inspired the Urdu writer Sayyad Imtiaz Ali Taj, who was from Lahore. And both Imtiaz Ali Taj's stage drama and the popular character inspired very successful films, from the 1930s almost to this day. It is important to know that, with the advent of the "talkies" films, Imtiaz Ali Taj modified his 1922 version for a better adaptation to cinematic drama. A fact that may explain his enduring success in cinema. Therefore it becomes interesting to study the precise role of language and style in the dialogues (and scenic descriptions) of those historical dramatic fictions: the stage drama and the film.
First: in Imtiaz Ali Taj's stage drama it is obvious that the type of language and style play a central paper in the author's attempts to reconstruct the past. Indeed, historical realism is an important component of the drama along with the tragic ending plot to captivate the spectator's (and reader's) attention and win his sympathy. In this paper we do not examine the intricate rapport of historical reality with historical fiction, nor do we bother to know if there was ever such a person as Imtiaz Ali Taj's Anarkali. But we are concerned with his writing techniques. What are the linguistic tools used by Imtiaz Ali Taj in his drama? How does he recreate the atmosphere and décor of the Mughal court of Lahore with mere words? What are his choices? How does he manage to modify and adapt his Urdu dialogues to what we would call his historical realism? Persian was the official language of the court and if Hindustani was already a widely spoken language, yet it was far from the language spoken and understood by the spectator of the 1930s. Further, Imtiaz Ali Taj has long descriptions and scenic indications given at the beginning of every part of his dram and interspersed within the dialogues. How do they contribute to his realistic décor?
Secondly: Imtiaz Ali Taj's drama inspired at least four very famous films, from 1928 to the 1990s, all built on his fiction, though modified. The most famous of those films is K. Asif's "Mughal e Azam" (1960, partly in colour). While it is obvious that K. Asif had the story of Anarkali arranged according to his own imagination, Imtiaz Ali Taj's fatal triangle (the couple and the rival) is still there as well as the dominating figure of the irate father. And naturally the historical Mughal frame imagined by Imtiaz Ali Taj is also there. More precisely what is left of Imtiaz Ali Taj's language and style in the film? Also do Imtiaz Ali Taj and K. Asif share common linguistic techniques and features?
Lastly, it is quite revealing to compare the language of a very recent historical film "Ashoka" by Santosh Sivan (2001) with K. Asif's language in "Mughal e Azam", a comparison justified by a statement of Santosh Sivan saying that he wanted to make another "Mughal e Azam". Naturally both films have little in common as far as history of India is concerned, yet parallels could easily be found in the main characters, and in symbols. Linguistic distance might be very important if we compare the writing of the dialogues. But what about the linguistic and stylistic techniques used to reconstruct the past, as wanted by the director?

Paper Giver 11: Hakim Arif, Dept. of Linguistics and Tazin Aziz Choudhury, Dept. of English, Dhaka University, Bangladesh

Paper 11 Title: Vulgarity in the titles of recent Bengali commercial films of Bangladesh: An onomastic study

Paper Abstract: Recently Bengali films are facing an identity crisis because of their deviation from contemporary culture and present life-style of Bengali people. In terms of theme, title, and quality, a sharp division between commercial and art film. Currently commercial films dominate in the film industry of Bangladesh in all respect and illustrate this kind of ‘cultural emptiness’, especially in their ‘titles’-the icon that manifest their existence in the real world. Presently the maximum number of Bangladeshi commercial films have such ‘vulgarities’ that not only fail to attract audiences’ attention but also reflect the moral depravity of their capital investors. Furthermore, these kinds of ‘vulgarities’ highlight the erosion of Bengali cultural values and the instability of Bengali society, the unhealthy environment of film industry and influence of ‘Bollywood’-the Indian biggest film industry Mumbai city that is famous for exporting commercial films throughout the world. In this paper, we will discuss the history of ‘title’ of Bengali films, the attitude of people regarding this trend of growing vulgar titles, their grammatical interpretation, thematic relevance and a brief description of the vulgar types of title that are presented in present Bangladeshi commercial films.

Paper Giver 12: A Salman Al-Azami and Tasleem Shakur, International Centre for Development & Environmental Studies (ICDES), Edge Hill University College, England

Paper 12 Title: Sarat Chandra’s Devdas: A comparative analysis of the language of the original Bengali text with two Hindi film versions

Paper Abstract: Although Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s original Bengali novel Devdas (the narrative style of which seems to be inspired by the late Victorian English novelists) was written as early as the turn of the 20th century, the urge to adapt it into film seems to be continuing even to the present time. This study attempts to analyse the Hindi film versions of Devdas, the earlier one directed by Bimal Roy (a renowned Bengali director in the 1950s,which provides a more literal translation of the original Bengali novel) and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's latest blockbuster (which has a number of deviations from the original text), and compares the language of the novel with the two film versions.
The paper analyses some interesting code switching from Hindi to Bengali in the recent film version. In the earlier film there were no attempts of code switching In Bhansali’s movie version, some characters suddenly switchover to Bengali words, phrases and sentences offering both code mixing and code switching. The paper seeks to analyse these expressions with a view to looking at their contextual significance. It also makes a thematic discussion of the communicative relevance of these dialogues. Early findings suggests that most of the Bengali dialogues have been used in relatively happy circumstances in the movie, apart from the protagonist Devdas himself, who as a complex and inconsistent character, uses Bengali in happy as well as tragic scenes.

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Panel No. 2

Panel Title: Language in South Asian Literature and Cinema

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

Panel report: